


dream of life everlasting

by omphale23



Category: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Brick's Maggie was stubborn, he'd give her that. But stubborn against Brick was a losing fight, like punching into a storm.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	dream of life everlasting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mekatt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mekatt/gifts).



> With many, many thanks to Sansets, for the beta help. And to Mekatt for requesting something deeply intriguing that I'd not have considered otherwise.

_  
**Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?**   
_

He thought he'd said the words, could have sworn that they'd slipped out past his teeth and into the room between lightning flashes. But the next morning Brick woke with Maggie's head on his shoulder and her fingers clawed around his arm like nothing had gone wrong at all, like all the hidden lies had come true when he wasn't looking. Maybe he'd failed to say them, maybe they'd gotten caught in his throat like all the ones Skipper had wanted, all the sentences Big Daddy had dragged out into the open.

Maybe he'd been talking to himself the whole time. Brick stretched and reached for his crutch, but had to settle for untying his wrist and dragging himself along the bed, hopping one-footed into the bathroom. He turned the lock carefully, quietly, and settled onto the tiles, back against the door.

The whole house would be up soon. He could already hear kids yelling in the yard, Mae's voice scratching over the top of the noises, car doors slamming. Gooper wouldn't be staying, not after that. He'd be on the road back to Memphis with his tail between his legs, and Brick spared a thought for how loud Christmas dinner was going to be. All that glaring, Mae with her pinched disgust and Maggie scrapping right back, both of them too proud to admit that none of it mattered any more than it ever had.

It made Brick tired, and he thought idly of going back to bed but Maggie was still there, sweet asleep like she wasn't awake. She looked like the girl Brick had married, asleep. Like that girl hadn't vanished in Chicago. It was harder, when she was asleep, to remember why he'd taken up drinking.

"Mendacity," Brick sighed at the tiles, his head pounding already at the fight he'd have to get out of the room. "Why can't they all—it wasn't, we didn't—damn it, he wouldn't." Brick groaned, rolled himself forward and started to right himself. "Damn it. We didn't."

No matter. Worst came to it, he'd get too drunk to stand and they'd all go back to pretending. Enough whiskey, and even Brick could believe in happy endings.

 _  
**Understanding is needed on this place.**   
_

Maggie slid her arms out over the sheets, eyes closed and smiling. They'd gone cool, wrinkled from the heat of bodies—two of them, no sleeping on the couch last night, no sir—but she'd heard the door click shut and wasn't worried. Not yet, not when she'd won, beaten them all fair and square.

See if they'd look down on her, once Brick's child was born—there'd be a child, there _must_ be, she'd make sure and certain—once they'd taken up the management from Big Daddy so that he'd be able to enjoy his last days. He could put his burdens on Brick’s shoulders, with Maggie there to help. And she would help, she would. She’d make sure everything worked out.

It was sad, of course, that Big Daddy was ill. Maggie thought it was the saddest thing in the world, and with Big Daddy such a nice old man, so attached to her and to Brick. And to the baby, couldn't forget the baby.

Maggie smiled again. It might have Brick's eyes, or his chin. Her hair, and of course their child would be sweet and kind and smart, all the things those little monsters Mae and Gooper had birthed couldn't lay claim to. A child worth having, this one. She tried out names under her breath. "Susan, James, Melanie. Annabelle." One of them was sure to stick. Maggie had faith, and she wanted what she wanted.

Brick would have to come out of the bathroom soon. The liquor was still in the hallway, after all, and the only way to get to it was through this very room.

Maggie laid one hand over her stomach and waited, idly running through the plans in her head.

 _  
**I hope he doesn't regret it.**   
_

It wasn't _fair_. That's what—when it came down to it, the whole mess was Brick's fault, and just like always, Gooper was stuck cleaning up and fixing things and being responsible. He'd be the one to put everything back together, and no one would even notice. No one saw all the work he did, the effort he made, not even now.

Mae was hissing in his ear again, furious at the world and her awkward place in it. "And then she _lied_ , Gooper, she stood right there and she lied through her teeth and that hateful old man—"

Gooper smacked his hand down on the hood of the convertible. "He is still my father, Mae. You'll keep a civil tongue about that, I don't care what he does." She flounced off, and Gooper rubbed his hand over his head and resigned himself to a week of chilly, silent punishment.

But it wasn't fair. It wasn't, and the worst thing, the hardest thing, was that Brick knew it, knew it was wrong and ignored and pretended and kept on drifting through in his own little haze of denying.

Mae’s voice rang out, “It’s time to go, you put those sticks down, you hear me? Your father is in a mood and I won’t have you beating them on the—” and faded as she rounded the corner of the house. A few minutes later, the first of the kids came barreling toward him, all of them running away from their mother.

Gooper considered, paced it out as he directed the packing and corralled the kids into the car. It was that Brick was the eye of a hurricane, a big one that took down houses and fields and leveled whole cities. He rotated, pickled himself in booze, and watched the whole world tear itself to pieces.

And around him the whole family flew, caught up in it. Even Big Daddy, although Gooper wasn't so stupid as to miss the fact that Big Daddy did it by choice. Because he _wanted_ to, because he thought it was funny to watch them scurry and fight. But it wasn't—

Mae's shout scattered his thoughts to the wind. "Gooper? Gooper, come say goodbye to your mother, we've got to go."

 _  
**And I did, I did so much, I did love you!**   
_

Big Daddy was still snoring when she went downstairs to see off Gooper and Mae. The children were all running in circles, chasing the leaves around, the girls just as rambunctious as their brothers.

She barely remembered being a girl, before she'd met Big Daddy. Oh, she must have been, once. Fluttering memories of dances and walks and giggling classmates. She'd had a mirror, lovely with cut glass edges and gilding. It hung on the wall of her Papa's house, all those years ago before her boys and the house and the plantation with its twenty-eight thousand acres.

In another lifetime, she'd had a name, not a title, not everyone in three counties calling her _Big Mama, Ma'am, Mrs. Pollitt, that there's Brick's momma, from up at the house_. She'd her pick of boys, all of them spit-slick and nervous, standing in her front hall and half-convinced that her Papa was going to shoot them dead. He might've, given the inclination. He was that kind of man.

Big Daddy had been the only one to look Papa in the eye, and that had been the start of it. Had been the end of it, too, maybe.

And now she looked herself in the eye, right in that gilded mirror—in her own hallway, now, just as it had been for twenty years—and she shook herself all over and she lifted her chin.

 _  
**I want to know how you got crippled.**   
_

The pain woke him. _Jesus_ , but it was worse this morning. Worse knowing it was coming, worse knowing what it meant. Worse, worse, worse, and he lay in the bed a minute, gasping up at the ceiling.

Big Mama was already long awake, probably out in the yard weeping on Mae's shoulder like women did. Useless, the crying. Annoying. Wasn't honest to cry, wasn't helpful.

The crying and the weeping and the—what had Brick called it? the— _mendacity_ of it all. Ridiculous word, sounded like those college boys Brick had brought home from Ole Miss every weekend. Always tearing through the house, too loud by half. Couldn’t hold their liquor worth a tinker’s damn. Gave him a headache.

His mind was wandering. Did that sometimes, either because he was getting old or because he just didn't give much of a crap. Little of both, rightly speaking.

Well. Time to take stock. He wasn't dead—not yet, despite appearances—and he wasn't quite out of his wits. Would be soon, though. Time enough to make up his mind. Time enough to wait, to watch. Brick's Maggie was stubborn, he'd give her that. But stubborn against Brick was a losing fight, like punching into a storm.

Made a person tired, but didn't change the direction of the wind a bit.

The pain flashed through again, a knife in his guts.

He'd decide tomorrow. Maybe the day after. There was time left, even now.


End file.
